


Reflecting in the Mirror

by just_a_dram



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Angst, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-14
Updated: 2012-10-14
Packaged: 2017-11-16 09:14:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 903
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/537855
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/just_a_dram/pseuds/just_a_dram
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Neither of them likes what they see reflected back in the mirror.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Reflecting in the Mirror

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the [](http://gameofships.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://gameofships.livejournal.com/)**gameofships** Tag, Your Ship! event.

Reflecting in the Mirror

  
Sansa sits at her dressing mirror, pulling a silver handled brush through her thick hair, the bristles loosening her curls, making them look soft as they fall over the white of her shift. He could bury his good hand in it, fist it tightly, and pull her head back far enough to kiss her. His cock urges him to do so, but instead Jaime frowns into the looking glass.

Her sharp blue eyes flick to his. She sets her brush down with measured care and swivels on the dressing bench until her knees point towards him. Her softly rounded chin tilts up to look at him.

“You look as if you don’t like what you see.”

“You’ve dyed your hair again.” So that it’s dark like polished walnut. She’s still unquestionably beautiful. There’s something striking about the darkness against the pale of her skin, but as the dye fades with time, the sun catches the strands so that the copper shines through and that’s when he likes it best, that is when he thinks he begins to see the beauty she could be. It was beautiful in the candlelight last night, when she straddled him with her plump lip caught between her teeth. “I wish you’d leave it be.”

“And if I should do that, you do realize it still wouldn’t be blonde, don’t you?”

That is one thing he couldn’t abide. He needs the differences. They ground him to the present; they keep him from giving in to the relentless tug of the past and sinking into his own grave beside his fair haired twin and their children.

He pinches her chin between his thumb and forefinger—too hard to be mistaken for a gesture of affection—and she narrows her eyes at him, daring him to do something, say something. He attempts to rise to the occasion. He would never strike her, but he tries to work himself into threatening her. _You’ll find yourself sleeping alone with a tongue that sharp_ , he hears himself speak, but it is an empty threat and not worth the trouble of actually voicing. Neither of them would sleep, should he abandon her bed.

Jaime draws his thumb over her lip, instead, giving in somewhat to his arousal rather than the urge to answer her taunt. She captures the tip, sucking it into her warm mouth. It’s as good as an apology. He can’t grab at her as he would like with his golden hand, but he slides it into her hair nonetheless, cradling her head, letting her rest the weight of it in his unyielding palm.

As his thumb slips free of her wet mouth, she sighs and tucks a lock of the newly darkened hair behind her ear.

“I wouldn’t like it to be red again,” she says, as she turns back towards her mirror. “It would remind me too much of my mother.”

Neither of them speaks much of the past, a silent rule of forgetting shared between them. They certainly never speak of her family or his. That is a pit of quicksand that could swallow them both.

He leans down to whisper, his lips brushing the shell of her ear. “You’re prettier than she was at your age.” It’s not courtly courtesy that makes him say it: it is the truth. As lovely as Catelyn Tully was, her daughter has surpassed her in beauty.

She swipes her hand over her looking glass, as if she could erase herself.

“You’re entirely a creature unto yourself, Sansa,” he promises.

He knows something of Littlefinger’s games. It is no wonder that Sansa has no wish to be mistaken for her lady mother. To see her mother’s face stare back at her would bring her grief and something darker besides.

Just as he sometimes sees Cersei in the looking glass. It is why he keeps his beard—the beard Sansa teasingly calls his golden mane. It’s flecked with grey, which helps as well. He doesn’t want to see the past in Sansa’s face, but he dreads it even more in his own. They are alike, hopelessly alike.

“A creature I’d rather not be. I’m not myself with this hair, not Sansa Stark.” Of course, everyone knows her to be Sansa now. The farce of Alayne Stone died with Littlefinger in a river of blood that grasping hands could not stem. “I feel safer this way,” she says, brushing her hair over her shoulder.

If it gives her comfort, Jaime won’t say another word, but she’s safe. He, who tried to kill two of her brothers, who would have happily killed her lord father, and who brought her lady mother a second death, when Brienne lay bleeding at her feet and she screamed with her hand pressed to a slit throat, will keep Sansa safe.

Sansa's love may be real, may be illusion—he is not entirely sure which. But her safety is his responsibility, his purpose, and it is all he has left.

He settles his hand into the small of her back and kisses her shoulder, where the neck of her shift exposes smooth skin. “You’re safe, my sweet. As safe as anyone can be.”

She gives him a sad smile in the mirror, looking at him as if he is but a child, dreaming of songs of knights and ladies. “And no one ever truly is, Jaime.”

THE END


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